First-hand dilemma of second-hand smokers

A ROSE by any other name would smell as sweet, but what are second-hand smoke freaks to do when Health Minister Micheál Martin’s smoking ban deprives them of their nightly fix of stale nicotine?

According to the Vintners’ Federation, that’s their only connection with the real world, and will lead to a break-up of civilisation here in Ireland. Crowds of second-handers will now start descending on Amsterdam’s pot shops just to get a whiff of Disque Bleu or Camel filter, instead of the old Woodbines or Rothmans which sustained them in their youth.

Scientists will add a second-hand smoke enzyme to washing powder, so future generations of men will start doing loads of washing day and night just for the thrill of smelling how it used to be in the good old days.

Many will be driven to distraction by exposure to the opposite sex for the first time, as the smoke clears from hazy bars and restaurants nationwide.

And (the final indignity) dry cleaners will surely go out of business as the smell of their chemical cleaners will overpower any normal citizen desensitised from smoke pollution. The only solution is not to inhale. Or set off on annual pilgrimage to the opium dens of Rangoon or Jalalabad.

And what will that do to our own tourist industry?

It’s all a plot to destroy the hard working publicans of Ireland, who have dedicated their lives to the betterment of their fellow men.

And the creation of that twilight ambience which made it such a pleasure to wake the dead in an atmosphere to which they were all accustomed. The divil a bit of harm it did them on their final journey to the graveyard.

Richard Dowling,

Coote Street,

Mountrath,

Co Laois.